#also yeah there are a bunch of french songs in these playlists

[gab-has-adhd]

*trips and drops my Illumi, Hisoka and hisoillu playlists*

[darklcy]

☆ 𝐦𝐨𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐧! 𝐀𝐎𝐓 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧𝐬 ☆

this has been in the drafts for a long, long time and i haven’t posted aot in a while, so enjoy :) | also i feel like some of these may be ooc but this was fun to write! just keep in mind this is how i think they’d act in a modern setting, ofc minus the war & trauma

attack on titan masterlist

𝐄𝐑𝐄𝐍

skips class to vape

smokes to thundercat & nirvana

flannels flannels flannels

naturally you steal them. acts coy when you do.

“you didn’t steal it, i just let you wear it and didn’t say anything when you went home with it.”

i feel like he’d be into meditating. idk why. like someone said he should do it so now he does a quick 5-min guided meditation every morning

showers with his chain on and gets green neck

doodles on his converse and yours

writes “hi :)” on your homework, journals, notes, etc during class

has a minecraft server w jean, connie and armin

claims he’s not scared of games like outlast or silent hill but everyone knows he’s lying

ends up hiding behind you in haunted houses

LOVES DRIVE THRUS/FAST FOOD. sonic & in n out specifically

toddler sense of humor, like finds things falling over funny (y’all remember the video of the piece of bread falling over-)

doesn’t know how to work pinterest

leans over people’s shoulders to look at their phones

tried getting his cartilage pierced but it got infected

has a few tattoos on his wrists and bicep

will bite you impulsively

𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐈𝐍

you mean my bf

so this boy DOES know how to work pinterest, and has so many boards

one of them is filled w future pets he wants & another one includes house ideas with you :3

is the best language learner and knows french, spanish, and german

can’t watch gory shows like squid game or the walking dead, but enjoys psychological horrors like black swan

has a billion playlists with like 6 songs each

your playlist is titled “lovey” bc i said so

has maybe one lobe piercing. but only one

he goes so hard to TV girl and mac demarco, but also loves singers like sza & jack stauber

LUVS SMOOTHIES

downloaded bumble only for the fun of it once but immediately deleted it when someone liked him

bounces his leg and picks his nails

best. skin. ever. has a good skin care regime

drives a silver toyota prius 

super into journaling & drawing :>

such a gentle bf, but lives for gossip

you text him, “you will NOT believe what i just heard.” and he drops everything he’s doing to respond

coffee dates!!!

you two have a stardew farm together with a dog and a bunch of chickens and cows

his favorite character is crobus

i love him very much

𝐌𝐈𝐊𝐀𝐒𝐀

hardcore alison from breakfast club vibes

secretly into girl kpop groups

but loves hardcore women, like björk & poppy

definitely owns a lot of platform shoes: has like three pairs of demonias

shaves her brows to draw them on 

loves online shopping from aliexpress & etsy

into weird chunky jewelry!! has a necklace with a heavy cat pendant & a pair of eyeball earrings

loves to do your makeup! if you don’t wear a lot daily, she’ll do something for special outings like concerts or even for fun she’ll ask you to let her do it :3

has a tiktok specifically for ootds

favorite foods include spicy ramen, mediterranean meals & ice cream

i feel like she’d be in art class! she’d draw you random portraits or cute versions of you two to put in her scrapbook

oh yeah i also feel like she’d have a scrapbook!!! and keeps a lot of mementos from your dates/hangouts

when you come over, you, her and eren play mario kart

no doubt a spiritual girly: maybe not super into spells but has a tarot deck and a few oracle decks as well as a beautiful incense burner

you two go to goth clubs cuz yeah

her lipstick gets on you all the time

dressed up as lydia deetz one year for halloween

makes rings and necklaces and gives them to you, and she debates on opening an etsy shop

— hope you enjoyed!

[nexility-sims]

⭐ For Leonor & Renzo! What’s their song?

What do they tease each other about?

What is their favourite non-sexual activity?

ULTIMATE RELATIONSHIP TAG  /   accepting !

thank you !!! excellent picks ...

what’s their song? whatever was playing through the wall in this scene, obviously !! ksdfjhsdf i have been chewing on this (and listening to various playlists), and i think there are a few that have the right vibe. my first thought was “it has to be a chili peppers song, clearly,” and i think “don’t forget me” is a good contender—sure, it’s about drugs like all of their best songs, but it always makes me think of relationships that are thrilling and raw and perhaps not the wisest in the long run; another one that stood out to me is “after dinner” by unloved, which just feels like a very leonor pov song; relatedly, maybe an even better fit but listed last because it just occurred to me, would be “french kiss” by sleep thieves. exhibit a: "i want to fall with you, fall faster, fall closer now, see the world and fuck all of that and let it go / along with you" ... perfect? perfect (EDIT: lana, obviously ???? alexa play "burning desire" … no, alexa play “peppers” ???)

what do they tease each other about? i’ve shown this a bit, but i feel like the biggest source of teasing must be how different their backgrounds are. that’s part of what i find interesting about them, that there’s a veneer of mutual understanding, but their upbringings and worldviews and ways of moving in the world are so disparate. so far, leonor’s on the receiving end—which, yeah, she is very much a pampered princess who doesn’t know anything about anything and acts snotty, which is funny if you’re a Normal person in comparison. renzo is also, in comparison, much more coarse and rude, which i think leonor finds amusing. plus, there’s the fact that it’s easier to joke about something dissonant than, like, treat it seriously. 

what is their favorite non-sexual activity?   surely anything can be a sexual activity if you're just Like That but i digress sdfsg i like this one because obviously there’s a whole bunch of hanging out and such that’s happening off-screen ! my first thought was that they must go to non-den events together—you know, open mics, music or performance art shows, things like that. renzo’s always alert to low-key, intimate goings-on that he can slip into and just vibe; i feel like leonor must enjoy the same, too. aside from that, going to bookstores and watching movies at home—hers or his, doesn’t matter. leonor has not seen a lot of stuff, and it’s probably in part a compromise for the fact that he refuses to watch anything he’s been in. it’s either go-go-go or just sitting around quietly for them, imo, and it's usually leonor following him around and doing whatever he's up to.

[thilsworld]

[Nov 2nd 2024]

Today I went on a 6km walk for a fundraiser event for Kim Hongjoong's birthday! 🎉

Well, the goal was 6km, but in the end according to my phone it was 7km, and according to my mom's fitbit watch it was 7.8km. Guess overachieving is just the norm for me nowadays.

I never really go on walks, it's not my thing. Either you're in a park and there's people and I am bad at basic social cues meaning I hate small talk (even saying hi as you pass someone I'll overthink). Or you're near traffic, and that's overwhelming in terms of sounds, lights, and fast moving objects in my peripheral all the time.

BUT, I joined a sponsor event!!

Basically for the birthday of singer Kim Hongjoong of the band Ateez, he was partnering with Global6kWorldVision to raise funds for water supplies for a more rural area in Africa. So to support my favorite singer and his goals to help out the world, I decided to participate in the event! 🧡

After donating the entry fee of €8, everyone was sent a file of a participation number. Like those you'd also get when running a marathon with a number on your chest. You'd print these, take a picture with it, walk or run 6km, and post a screenshot of your tracking app as proof of participation.

With the autumn weather it was definitely a bit cold for such a long walk, but the beautiful scenery made up for it.

I was a bit dumb though, cause I own hiking shoes. However, my dumbass put on my scensory safe sneakers which have velcro straps to close them. Which is good for short distances, but because the velcro doesn't close the shoes as tightly as hiking shoes would, I now have blisters 🥲

However I also got to see some pretty parks, and also walked past this small farm with 2 donkeys, a bunch of chickens, and some bunnies! 🐇

Lowkey my hair looks so nice in that picture with the donkeys!? It never looks that wavy but I love it 🤭

I didn't use my headphones for the majority of my walk, but the last 1km was on the sidewalk next to busy roads, meaning I was getting overwhelmed by the traffic noises FAST!

Luckily Hongjoong had also prepped a playlist for everyone participating, so I got to listen to some songs by him and his group, some old classics from artists like David Bowie and Michael Jackson, and some more pop-rock-esque songs from my own teen years since he is the same age range as me and grew up on similar music, such as Twenty One Pilots, Paramore and Panic! At The Disco. My personal favorite song from the playlist and thus my song recommendation of the day: Runaway Baby by Bruno Mars 💛

Since it's also just 2 days after Halloween, some people still had decorations up, which was nice to see since our country doesn't even really celebrate Halloween. But this one neighbour was fully decked out with amazing decorations and there were trick or treat tables by front doors and stuff, so I'm guessing that specific neighbourhood had decided to celebrate together for the kids there, which was so cute 🎃

So yeah, while I don't really like going on walks due to sensory overwhelm, and the muscle pain and blisters afterwards are telling me to never do it again, I did have a lot of fun doing this, and I'm glad I could participate in this fundraiser event.

The rest of the day I just sat in my comfy chair watching Netflix btw. I deserved to recharge after that walk 😂

To end of this blog entry, 3 positive things of today I'm grateful for:

After I got home from the long walk I made soup and my mom made French toast, so I had a nice warm lunch after exploring the cold outside world 🍂

I am proud of myself for going out of my comfort zone and going on this walk while trying out some new coping strategies I learned in therapy for my autistic sensory overwhelm 🩷

When I got home my cat Storm fell asleep in my lap and on top of my arm. It was a bit impractical to have 1 arm be trapped under his weight, but he was too cute to move him. I'll put a picture of him here 🥹

Thank you for reading!

Much love,

- Thil ✨

[neonwizardheehee]

Saw your tags! I listen to a whole bunch of music in French, mostly from Canada, cause well it's what I come from. My top played French song is Dégénérations by Mes Aïeux (I tried to recreate it on My Singing Monsters once so I listened to it on repeat a lot lol.) I have one singular song in Italian on my phone, L'italiano by Toto Cutungo, and apparently I've played it a lot. And Deutschland by Rammstein was my 100th most played song! I was surprised that Spanish didn't show up in my most played cause I do have a few on my phone, but I think I've downloaded most of them recently so their play count is still lower than other songs I've had for longer.

How about your songs in Finnish, Croatic and German?

Oh dear I am so sorry I've not answered this sooner!!! (little in between secret life screaming but also pls continue <3) I did listen to your recs asap tho and Dégénerations SLAPS SO HARD???? LIKE???????????????????? I love the base and vibe and general mood :OOO (if u have more like that hmuuuu)

And ohhhh I know the italian one! But idk where from but also Yeeeeeeess it needs to go into a playlist now! (i don't have an italian one - what a scandal!!)

Ahhhh good old Rammstein XD my sis had a funny moment this year with her wrapped bc she listened to them the most until the allegations came up and then boom nearly nothing ksksksk (but yeah good song still, the video was bomb af and i still think about it and its meaning)

Well Finnsih and Croatic are this year's Eurovision ones hehehehe so no surprise there

My german song is "Rom" by Dschinghis Khan ksksksks it sounds so dramatic and epic and oh my I'm SO glad I found that one again bc hell yes it's fucking long but it also changes so much!!! And it tells about the story of Rome and the dramaaaaaa XD

Also very cool that you're from Canada!! Somehow I assumed it was France but nice to know now!! If you have more french songs to recmmend hmu, I love that language :333

[appreciatingtokrev]

that's true, i just keep reminding myself that nothing last forever but i am a bit sad about the ending. do you normally go to an art museum? ah, i suppose life is full of surprises, you never know what is around the corner. that's great, it's better to see things as the cup half full than empty.

i think gi will still be the company's most successful game. do you just stick to PC games then? isn't hsr the only one whose have a voice for the MC? i'm always phone based so i'm lost with the letters lol. wait, you can play it in class? 👀

don't worry, quite a few people retake a year no matter what country they are in so you're not the only one and i understand retaking a year more than once can be a bit demotivating but you can get through this.

just try not to beat yourself up about it, you are trying your best. yes, extra time to re-evaluate some options, would you like to goes into the STEMs? or another field?

i can imagine lmao, some kpop fans are too extreme though where they end up becoming saesangs. which kpop group did she introduce you to? i am an ex-kpop fan so i no longer know about the current groups.

those earrings would stand out wherever you would go especially since they are gold coloured lol. i have actually seen some shorts on YouTube of users styling their wigs and it's look like a profession because of how hard it look 💀 i'm wondering you might find a 15th february person? who know lmao but birthday twin would be most exciting. our time zone difference seem to be one hour apart so we should be able to wish each other on our days? i'll probably come off anon when it happen 🙂

you can take another shirt that fit you properly and ask them to use the shirt for guidance or get proper measurements. i just scrolled up the sleeves for mine lol. it is only the sleeves and nothing too complex so i can't imagine it will be expensive.

yeah, of course. i feel the same whenever any of my friendships or relationships or whatever end bc at the end there was still a lot of love and care involved. i love going to art museums <3 i generally love art and museums lol. i visit a bunch of museums every year, usually with my father, my godmother or said friend i mentioned. so yeah ig i usually visit them?

agreed lol, i mean hi3rd was already big before genshin but genshin topped it off still. omg my phone literally only has 16gb of storage so i can’t play any games on there ajdkffjskaj meaning i very much stick to my laptop. hi3rd doesn’t have a mc the way gi/hsr do and kiana does have a voice plus gi’s mc is occasionally voiced (only during cutscenes i think?). the mc in hsr is definitley voiced a lot more tho. i mean... i shouldn’t be playing any video games in class..... but always work on our devices anyways....... and i’d much rather play hi3rd than do french in class... ajdkfjdjsk (i’m not a good example of a student ajdkgkksj)

aa ty :) i’m doing great in school rn bc it’s all topics i’ve had before at a different school haha and i hope it’ll stay like this for a while, but let’s see. i’m also in the process of getting meds for my adhd so hopefully i’ll be able to study easier sometime in the future. honestly idk what i wanna do later rn... psychology or biology, specifically marine biology maybe? i’d love to be a marine biologist, but i get sea sick :/ though at the moment i’m mostly leaning towards studying medicine so i can work in forensic medicine. but luckily i still have at least a year to decide.

yeah, the kpop fans... she mostly introduced me to stray kids. i’m not like a big kpop fan, but i do have a playlist with kpop songs i like bc of her lol.

aren’t they silver colored tho? i made mine in silver at least ajdkfkks. but yeah, agreed. yeah, wig styling does look difficult tbh 💀 but. i believe in myself. if i believe enough it’s got to work...

maybe, who knows. ohh no more anon z next february 16th :0 hehe, i’ll gladly wait until then :3

ahh i have no long-sleeved shirts that correctly fit me ajfjfjhsk the only ones i’ve got left are from when my parents made me buy them bc i dislike them and prefer oversized hoodies and stuff by a lot lol. thanks for the tip though

[sunnyhoon]

[random relationship headcanons of enhypen+song that reminds me of them]

warnings: few no no words, and my grammar😁

a/n: tbh these are just random things i thought about during today lol

request are open at the moment

heeseung> in my mind by lyn lapid

> you guys got your own apartment together. the process of moving in was pretty chaotic but totally worth. apartment shopping was smm fun. and you guys threw a housewarming *apartmentwarming* party with the rest of the boys. the boys visited frequently like showing up at random times. but you guys love them so you enjoy their company

> if you didn’t know heeseung is a gamer. so on your free time when you’re both feeling lazy you’ll play video games. sometimes joint by Ni-ki and sometimes you just watch them. you admire on how they get into the game and how competitive it gets. you end up cheering on ni-ki “lol you’re own girlfriend isn’t cheering for you” and heeseung ends losing and ni-ki teases him even more

> heeseung is normally pretty mellow and quiet but when you guys are alone after eating a bunch of sugary snacks at midnight he’s really chaotic and hyper. it’s amazing seeing him at this state. you guys are laughing at anything and everything. the vibes are immaculate.

jay> falling by chase atlantic

> jay would make you breakfast in the morning. it would be the cliche you wake up in the morning to reach over to jay and you wouldn’t feel him there so you’re like “oh no he died” no idea why that’s your first thought but than you smell bacon and eggs. you proceed to go to the kitchen and see jay with his cute apron cooking up some bomb ass bacon, eggs, toast, pancakes, waffles, and smoothies. like a whole buffet. not complaining

> shopping with jay would be fun. when trying in clothes you ask jay his opinion on the item and he would be super honest with you. sometimes you guys would pick out outfits for each other like a challenge. let’s just say jay definitely won that competition BAHAHHA. he would offer to pay for you all the time because he loves paying for you but when you insist that you can pay for yourself he will respect that.

> he’s a very patient person. you’ll purposely try to annoy him (it’s out of love) and he’ll just sit there patiently. but deep down he’s just happy that you’re giving him attention and that you’re happy

jake> dark red by steve lacy

> jake takes pictures of you doing really random stuff. sometimes they’re even embarrassing. he has a picture of your face when you’re getting ready to sneeze. he has another picture of you drooling in your sleep as his lockscreen and you got super embarrassed “ew jake why i look so ugly” he doesn’t understand why you find it embarrassing or ugly. he thinks you so cute in it. moral of the story boyfriends love the most embarrassing photos you

> one time he took you on a picnic date with layla. he was soo happy when you and layla got along, because obviously layla is really important to him and you’re also important to him. layla might have liked you even more than him and you gave her more attention to her so he like “looks like i’m third wheeling my one girlfriend and dog huh”

> okay yeah making playlists for your spouse is cute but man. jake wrote a song about you. he doesn’t actually get to release since of his career and his label wouldn’t allow that but he really hopes he can in the future since it means a lot to him. when he showed you he was super excited for your reaction. it was such a beautiful song. you got emotional and all, it’s not a everyday thing that someone writes a song about you

sunghoon>brooklyn baby by lana del ray

> he loves playing with your hair but he loves it when you play with hair even more. just brushing through it with your fingers is so relaxing to him. he lets you braid his hair to. one time you were trying to learn french braids and he let you practice on him and he looked so handsome with his hair back

> takes you to the rink. as most of you know he’s a retired figure skater so once in a while he likes to take a skate at the rink and when you guys started dating he took you with him. if you didn’t know how to skate he would teach you how to, he would be really encouraging but at the same time he would tease the absolute living hell out of you “haha you fell”. he finds it adorable how you cling onto him when you get scared you’re gonna fall, he loves it sm.

> if your hands get cold he will run them for you to warm them up or he will hold your hand in his pocket. you’ll also get a lecture from that goes like “i told you that you should have brought gloves, it’s cold out and now look” with this face😐 but we both know that sunghoon is damn well happy because he gets a reason to hold your hand :))) awww sunghoon

sunoo> dandelions by ruth b

> sunoo and you would have lazy nights where you just lay on the couch watching true crime documentaries because i can see sunoo being interested in them, comedies, disney movies of course, and kdrama if that’s what you’re into. y’all would sit there for hours

> sunoo would have a chain with your ring on it and you would do the same. it’s very subtle since he’s an idol and he doesn’t want to be suspicious because it would be if he has a necklace with someone else’s initial on yk?

> sunoo is always texting you, facetiming you, or on call with you. he’s an idol so he’s pretty busy and travels a lot to so whenever he gets the chance he’ll send you a text updating you on his day and you’ll do the same, he will facetime you before a concert or an interview. he likes talking to you before he has to go on stage because he feels anxious sometimes so you calm him down. i love you sm sunoo

jungwon> lover by taylor swift

> deep conversations. i feel like jungwon loves having deep conversations, you guys would be laying in bed at midnight laugh at embarrassing stories, talk about conspiracy theories, childhood, give advice, share secrets, vent and rant. he seems easy to talk to

> jungwon is another one who likes late night walks. he would send “i’m 2 mins away from your house be ready, we’re going to the park” when you were just closing you eyes. but since he’s already near your house there’s no way you can say no. in reward you got to wear his hoodie, he even let you keep it brb gonna cry.

> jungwon makes playlists dedicated for you, songs that remind him of you, or songs that he thinks you’d like, or songs in oder that spell out i love you pls tell me you know what i mean. when he shows it he’ll watch you try to figure out what it means, they’re just a bunch of random songs together right? he’s thinking “i can’t believe i’m in love with this idiot” and it finally clicks in your head. “AWWW JUNGWON YOURE SO WHIPPED FOR ME HAHAHAHHA” and he rolls his eyes. but you do give him a phat hug “i love you to wonie”

ni-ki> last first kiss by one direction

> Ni-ki seems like the guy to show up at your door when it’s 2 am in the morning to drag you to a fast food restaurant or to get snacks at a convenient store. i mean who doesn’t love late night walks for food right?

> your relationship with Ni-ki is the “young love” type of thing. if you were taking public transport with him i see that ni-ki would find every way possible to annoy you and would bicker with you than the old married couple behind you guys would be like “aww young lovers”

> he’s your first everything and your his first everything. it’s all kind of awkward since you guys have never dated anyone, kissed anyone, or overall relationship stuff but you guys get comfortable. just give it some time :)

[uppermocns-moved]

if you’re taking requests maybe roadtrips with eren, jean, armin and connie?

road trips

oh my god this is the greatest idea i’ve ever heard. 

eren, jean, armin, connie + road trips

(going on a road trip with all four of them at the end)

cw: fairly gender-neutral, modernverse, weed references

𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻 𝗷𝗮𝗲𝗴𝗲𝗿

eren insists on driving the whole time, no matter how long the trip is.

his phone is plugged into the aux because “my car, my rules” but he doesn’t complain when you unlock his phone and start picking songs. 

forcing him to pull into a drive-through so he can eat real food, not just the 44 oz of mountain dew and monster energy he got from the gas station before you left.

hand-feeding him french fries.

playing i spy when it’s too dark to see anything, or on long highway stretches where the scenery doesn’t change. 

“i spy... something blue.” “is it the sky?” “you’re so good at this, babe.”

it’s very easy to talk him into impulsive detours, even if they’re in the opposite direction – he may be the one driving, but he’s relying solely on you for instructions. just tell him where you’re going and he’ll take you there.

“___ is only a two hour drive from here! we should go!” “yeah? okay.” 

driving with the windows down and enjoying the cool nighttime air.

car-camping in national parks – putting the seats down in the back and throwing together your bed for the night, sitting on the hood of his car to look at the stars with no light pollution, getting baked and watching a dumb show off his phone before going to sleep. 

at this point, eren realizes he forgot to pack his phone charger so you’ve gotta share.

getting breakfast together. eren’s not a morning person, but he can’t be grumpy when you’re looking so cute and sleepy in one of his hoodies. 

eren driving with one hand on the wheel and the other holding yours, occasionally lifting it up for a kiss as a silent thank you for being there with him. as if you’d dream of being anywhere else. 

𝗷𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗸𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗶𝗻

listening to the radio to keep things spontaneous, usually the classic rock stations. 

jean taking his hands off the wheel because he needs to air-bass along.

listening to true crime podcasts when the radio cuts out – it’s funny watching jean’s face twist up in disgust during crime scene details, and sometimes he yells in response as if the podcasters can hear him. you also play detective about who you think did it – loser buys food at the next stop. 

music keeps things energetic at the start, but podcasts keep his mind stimulated when he’s been driving for a while. 

the original plan is to split the driving, but you end up falling asleep with your face smushed against the window and jean doesn’t have the heart to wake you up. he doesn’t mind driving the rest of the way.

stopping for food every couple of hours to make sure you’re both eating properly, not just snacks. you do have plenty of snacks, though. 

jean going "uh – excuse me” whenever you open a bag of something and sticking his hand out. he’s like a dad, he always needs a handful of whatever you’re having. sharing is caring. 

jean always packs a lot of unnecessary things, and he will reserve the right to say i told you so when his double-hammock comes in handy.

limited stops along the way (minus food/gas/bathroom) – getting there relatively early means you can relax in the hotel room and maybe explore/go out for dinner later that night.  

when you take over driving, jean is a big window-watcher and takes a lot of pictures of the mountains/scenery. 

already making plans on cool things you can do on the way back, when you have no time restraints – day trips, scenic rest stops, hikes, etc. 

𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻 𝗮𝗿𝗹𝗲𝗿𝘁

stopping at a starbucks first-thing to get drinks for the road (he makes sure to get some food too so you’re not just running off a venti iced coffee)

splitting the driving – armin is the better (and calmer) navigator so you usually take the first and final shift. 

dozens of cute polaroids to put in your adventure scrapbook

researches fun (and romantic) things you can do when you get to your destination and reads them aloud to you. you come up with a plan together. that waterfall hike sounded really fun. 

armin takes lots of videos because he likes making little montages for his socials

you’re in control of the music. armin likes when you show him new artists – he’ll slowly nod his head along and inevitably add the songs to his spotify. he really likes snail mail. 

he takes over driving when you get tired – he likes holding your hand when he drives, or sometimes you’ll lean over and rest your hand on his thigh.

armin trying not to melt when you put on one of his hoodies for warmth – you have your own, but his are comfier and they smell like him. 

silly games to pass time like i spy or looking for different license plates. it’s fun until armin gets clever and spies things like the mile marker from 10 miles back. 

you insist you aren’t going to fall asleep because you wanna keep him company, but you end up curling into your pillow and dozing off mid-conversation. it’s adorable, and he doesn’t mind. he’ll usually turn on a podcast or an audiobook. 

armin stays awake the whole time but it catches up with him once you reach your destination – all he wants to do is cuddle and rest up

��𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗿

leaving a day in advance or very early in the morning because you stop at every tourist attraction along the way.

scenic lookout? let’s go there. world’s biggest ball of yarn? fuck, count me in. meteor craters? already merging onto the exit. dinosaur bones? you read my mind. 

picking up cool souvenirs along the way like geodes and stickers to put on his water bottle. maybe a funky lil alien to hang from the rearview mirror, along with his 20 tree air fresheners. 

taking cute, cheesy pictures of and with each other – connie posing with his arms out like he’s holding the mountain, standing in front of national park signs, etc. 

you collaborated on a road-trip playlist in advance (it’s 12 hours long)

somehow you end up listening to veggie tales or absolutely losing it until the car starts rocking to britney spears

"i love this song” to every song, as if he didn’t put it on the playlist 

listening to connie sing along and butcher all the lyrics. impressive falsetto, though. 

arsenal of snacks – more than you realistically need

screaming every time you see a new “welcome to ___” sign

“WELCOME TO ___!” “WOOOOOO!”

connie rocking the socks with slides. it’s comfortable. 

pulling through drive throughs every once in a while for food, continuously forgetting to throw out the trash bag from your last stop. 

𝗴𝗼𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗻 𝗮 𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗱 𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗽 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺

stopping at the gas station to fill up the gas tank and stock up on snacks for the road – almost everything from the candy aisle, giant bags of doritos, slushies, energy drinks. nobody really thinks to get actual food.

the driving is split between eren “i’m serious, pull the fucking car over or i’m gonna piss myself, jean” jaeger and jean “eren stop honking my fucking horn, traffic won’t go any faster” kirstein. armin is the navigator because they’ll both get everyone lost.

everyone has their turn with the aux cord – until connie cracks himself up playing the same song over and over, then you have to pry it from eren’s cold, dead hands.

so many pictures

impulsive stops at tourist attractions.

playing dumb games to pass the time (quickly turns into replacing one word on each sign with “poop” because they’re all a bunch of children).

finally stopping at a diner later that night for real food

making it to the campsite and setting up tents and hammocks

getting baked around the campfire and telling spooky stories

connie complaining and scaring himself while he wanders off into the dark forest to find a spot to piss

smores (ofc)

going on group hikes and jumping into lakes/down waterfalls together. video of jean belly-flopping.

[fruity-pontmercy]

y’know what? here: All my Les Mis related playlists:

 - Les Mis but fixed is a compilation of most of the songs from the stage musical, but with a little twist. A little bit of spice if you will, just enough to make Victor Hugo proud. 

-Les Mis but none of the songs are from Les Mis is my jukebox musical playlist, you can add songs that make you think of Les Mis or that you think are similar in meaning to some les mis songs. It’s a lot of fun, and let me tell you, you guys are funny as heck. whoever put “I just died in your arms tonight” as a stand in for A Little Fall of Pain deserves an award. 

-The Amis Roadtrip through southern France playlist is a playlist I made for my road trip AU, you guys can add any song that you think the amis would listen to on a long ,boring, unpredictable drive from Paris to Montpellier and back where they have to stop every few 15 minutes because one of them got lost. 

-The ultimate ExR collaborative playlist is exactly what it sounds like. it’s a big fat playlist where you guys can add any song that makes you think of enjoltaire, due to bot activity I had to delete the original playlist :( but thats ok 

-The Noodle and The Lark is my marisette playlist, feel free to add any extra lovey-dovey, any extra fluffy love song on there. It’s just a really wholesome playlist ok 

-All That’s Left Of Us Vibes is a playlist with songs that make me think the Amis webseries of the same name, as always it is a collaborative playlist so feel free to add whichever songs you please!!! 

-Inevitable Courferre Playlist was just a disaster waiting to happen. Given my obsession with making playlists, I’m surprised I didn't make this playlist sooner (which is why it was “inevitable”). Either way this is exactly what it sounds like, its a playlist with a bunch of songs that make me think of Courferre. Like always, this playlist is collaborative, so feel free to add any songs you like!!!

-The Café Musain Playlist is a silly little collaborative playlist for you to add any songs that make you think of the Amis de l’ABC (canon era or modern!AU both), in a sense it’s similar to my road trip playlist except that this one isn't limited to songs you’d listen to in a car to not fall asleep X)

and lastly (and mind you I greatly debated whether I should even mention this one or not):

-Clairvoyance is a non-collaborative playlist where I add all the songs that make me think of my silly little platonic ExR fic idea (also named Clairvoyance... how original) so its mostly semi-angsty songs or French pop so uhhh... yeah :)

[koheletgirl]

do ed now

did your mom not teach you to say please ok edward teach here we go again the order is random

you do / you don’t wanna be crazy - edcore

face your fears - ed is paula and stede is rebecca.

trent is getting ready song - i'm gonna infiltrate your guy friend group tonight... so when at the future time you see me chilling with them you'll think “he's so normal, i'm in love....”

no one else is singing my song - self explanatory

farewell, fair mustache - i’m a comedic genius i think

a boy band made up of four joshes - i think that’s how ed sees stede sometimes

the moment is me - edcore

the darkness - yeah....

nothing is ever anyone’s fault - i think this is the subtext of some scenes with stede

maybe i’m just broken - trumpets now

(tell me i’m okay) patrick - self explanatory. patrick is lucius

group hang - for every moment ed wants to spend alone on the ship with stede

fit hot guys have problems too - self explanatory

make makeover - this happens a few times

man nap - this song is so edcore

i’m just a boy in love - i wanted “i’m just a girl in love”, but this version has creepier undertones and i think it’s fitting.

i’m the villain in my own story - i’m the figure in the doorway or the kraken up in norway...

angry mad - self explanatory

maybe this dream - episode 9......

i’m not sad you’re sad - edcore

fuckton of cats

his status is... preferred - how ed sees stede, particularly in ep 5

friendtopia - you know, ed and izzy.. before everything 

i could if i wanted to - edcore

ping pong girl - episode 5

scary scary sexy lady - edcore

you stupid bitch - self explanatory 

i hate everything but you - with stede. but like not in a healthy way

i’m in a sexy french depression - episode 10. this should be an edit

we’ll never have problems again - this is stede and ed, in several moments throughout the series.

what’ll it be? - i mean the whole show is just one long identity crisis for ed

greg’s drinking song - i think it’s funny. also i think he has a drinking problem

eleven o’clock - well this is one where you actually need the context from the show i think. i don’t think this song is as impactful on its own. but this is my way of saying i love you ed and i support your journey 

where’s rebecca bunch - added this yesterday after seeing this

❤️‍🩹 the playlist ❤️‍🩹

[4ragon]

i didn't know angie mcmahon and went to listen to her and i'm genuinely in love with her as a singing voice for ema?? also ! if you're still doing these, athena and/or simon please?

Hell yeah Angie McMahon slaps, give her a listen if you can! I particularly like Slow Mover and If You Call

Athena

While she technically has perfect pitch, she’s not so good at keeping on pitch. She can hear it’s wrong, she just can’t correct herself. But she has fun singing along loudly to her music, so it works out in the end

Widget can technically play music but only weird midi versions of whatever she tries to play, so she had to remove Spotify from his apps

She listens to a lot of foreign music, particularly French and German. She keeps trying to get her friends into them, though Trucy seems more receptive than the likes of Apollo

She also has a lot of songs from Juniper, very gentle feel-good music that she’s added to her yoga playlist and general listening

Her yoga playlist also has a lot of steel drums and is very upbeat

She has taken some steel drums classes and is very quick to point out that they’re technically called steel pans

She can play several woodwind instruments, but none particularly well. That doesn’t stop her though

She in particular has a bunch of different playlists that she listens to. A workout playlist, a jogging playlist, a yoga playlist, a work playlist, a cooking playlist, a driving playlist, and the list goes on

Every once in a while someone will add a bunch of indecipherable metal music to her yoga playlist and give her a heart attack. She thinks it’s Apollo messing with her, but it’s actually Simon

Speaking of Simon

He used to have a very nice voice, though he was a bit shy about singing in public. However, he did take up smoking in prison, and now he’s far more self conscious about his voice than he was before

He still has a nice voice, it’s just a lot rougher and doesn’t have a very high range. He can go really low though

He could probably do a pretty good “metal” voice if he wanted to

However, he absolutely will not sing in public unless forced, so really the only one who has heard him sing is Taka

He also has a weird assortment of music tastes. He likes a lot of traditional Japanese music, but also picked up an appreciation for stuff like metal while in prison

(Edit almost forgot but he likes anime songs and just won’t admit to it)

He is deeply unfamiliar with all pop music, or really anything that came out after his arrest

However, the Gavinners were big starting a year before his arrest, so he knows some of their early stuff. He liked it at the time, though he feels a bit weird about it now

Athena shared her Spotify password with him, since he was weirdly stubborn about getting one for himself. He likes to occasionally mess with her playlists because she never seems to realize he’s the one doing it

He also has a playlist specifically designed to slowly wear down Klavier Gavin’s sanity that he will play when he’s annoyed. Unlike Trucy, Simon is very good at finding music that specific people will hate

[soundsof71]

So, considering you are a passionate fan of music released in 1971, I feel justifiably obligated to ask you what you think of Buffy Sainte-Marie's 'She Used to Wanna Be a Ballerina' album. 😂 (Also, it would make me beyond happy if you could post more about Buffy, my friend! Thank you! ❣)

Buffy Sainte-Marie + Crazy Horse - what’s not to love? LOL I confess that it was the Crazy Horse connection that caught my attention first. I had a general idea who Buffy was, had seen her on TV a few times, but I was a big Crazy Horse fan. News that they were her backing band for this album was easily enough for me to scoop it up.

They weren’t doing anything much with Neil Young in 1971 (other than this album, on which Neil also appeared!), but they had released a tasty solo album in February 71, produced by Jack Nitzsche (who also produced this, and would later marry Buffy), and featuring Ry Cooder (also featured here, although did not marry Buffy). 

(btw, the first place that Buffy, Ry, and Jack worked together was on the Nic Roeg film Performance, starring Mick Jagger. People obviously remember Mick in that, but musically, Buffy was the best part!) 

She Used To Wanna... also features Jesse Ed Davis, a Native American guitarist and singer who was a frequent “usual suspect” at these sort of “sure, invite everyone!” jam albums of the era, and played a prominent role at 1971′s biggest concert (at least in the US), The Concert for Bangladesh on August 1.

(I know you know  RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked The World, the documentary about indigenous music’s influence on rock and roll, which has chapters on both Buffy and Jesse Ed. I just watched it again recently, and love it! A reminder of Buffy’s pivotal role in classic rock history. Not mentioned in the film: she relentlessly championed the work of her fellow Canadians Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen, helping them get their first record deals.)

I haven’t listened to She Used To Wanna Be A Ballerina for a while, so I definitely need to do that, along with posting more pictures of Buffy.  (I can’t believe I’ve only posted two!) 

But I’ll tell you what still stands out to me about that record years later. “Smack Water Jack” is an underrated track from Carole King’s Tapestry that got a ton of airplay at the time. Quincy Jones did an instrumental cover as the title track for his terrific 1971 album, too, but it has somehow faded to obscurity since then. Buffy takes a playful trifle, and turns it into a powerful fable of men of color who explode into violence in response to the violence visited upon them, and self-satisfaction of whites in authority who answer their demands for better living conditions by killing them on the spot. 

No need for a trial when you can murder them in the streets, right? “You can't talk to a man when he don't wanna understand / And he don't wanna understand” hits different when Buffy sings it, and in 2020 for that matter. 

It’s also just a terrific performance whose combination of soul and rock and roll and driving piano in a sort of Old West-sounding context would have made this sound right at home on a record like Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection  or something by The Band. I’m limited to five video embeds per post so I can’t embed it here, so I'm linking instead: anyone who hasn’t heard this definitely needs to.

Her cover of Neil’s CSNY track “Helpless” has things I like even better than Neil’s original, including Merry Clayton standing in for CSN. Buffy’s version is more muscular (thanks again to Crazy Horse), and taps even more deeply into the isolation of the song that the star power of CSNY somewhat obscured. 

Buffy’s version also made a brief but memorable appearance in the 2018 film Hotel Artemis, starring Jodie Foster. A weird little movie that I loved maybe more than it deserved LOL but I recommend nonetheless:

I know that this album gets attention because of the unusual number of covers, including one by Leonard Cohen, and a cover of a cover that Leonard had made famous on top of that, called "Song of the French Partisan” (hers is the far superior version imo, a song of French resistance to Nazi occupation from the perspective of a woman hiding a resister), but there are a couple of standout originals too. 

I love the title of this record, and the title track is a delightful little stomper that playfully cautions against equating the intentions of grown women with the childhood fantasies they’ve grown out of. More Merry Clayton goodness here on backing vocals too. 

“Soldier Blue” is a powerful song first written for the 1970 film of the same name, billed at the time as “The most savage film in history” -- and maybe it was. It used the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre as a metaphor for Vietnam, and it's still shockingly brutal. It was the third-highest grossing movie in the UK in 1971, though, and the single became a top-10 hit for Buffy there. 

It didn’t do as well here, either the song or the movie. Perhaps not shockingly in retrospect, Soldier Blue was pulled from American theaters after a few days, the Vietnam metaphor not at all lost on the Nixon administration. 

As horrifying as it was, this is about when I was reading Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee (first published in 1970), and Soldier Blue resonated with me in a whole lot of ways. Here’s the song in the opening credits of the movie.

I was also really struck by “Moratorium”, which is the story of “Universal Soldier” (from her 1963 debut, but a bigger hit for Donovan in 1965), coming from the opposite direction. In the earlier song, she blamed war on the soldiers who think that fighting is honorable, but here, she has empathizes with the young men, boys really in many cases, who’ve been lied to by their countries, their parents, and even their friends. They’re not vainglorious. They’ve been duped by people they trusted. 

(I don't think she takes enough into account how many men sign up to fight because they want to embrace and celebrate their worst, most violent impulses, which was of course an undercurrent of “Universal Soldier”, but I appreciate her empathy here. More than one thing is true at a time.)

Buffy goes even farther, though, calling on soldiers to support and validate demands for peace as explicitly supporting them, summed up in the unforgettable cry, "Fuck the war and bring our brothers home!" 

1971 was the peak of antiwar demonstrations in the US, with the biggest crowds ever seen in this country until the 2017 Women’s March. The May 1971 demonstrations pretty much shut down Washington, culminating with Vietnam Veterans Against The War throwing back their medals on the steps of the US Capitol, incredibly powerful stuff to see on TV in my formative years, and Buffy was right there in it. Anti-war songs were a cottage industry for sure, but nobody was writing with the nuance and empathy that Buffy was.

Here’s a 1972 performance of “Moratorium”, Buffy and a piano, and more emotionally bare than that:

There’s obviously lots more to say about Buffy, far outside the realm of protest music that was actually just a small part of her musical palette -- her pioneering experiments with electronic music, her educational philanthropy starting in her 20s, Sesame Street, you name it. Her commercial peak was still in front of her, and while I can’t say that this is my favorite of her records, it does have some of my favorite songs of hers, and 1971 and She Used to Wanna Be A Ballerina is definitely where I went from knowing who Buffy Sainte-Marie was to being a fan. 

I'll also note as I do now and again that while this blog started as an offshoot of a book on 1971 that I’d started but abandoned, I mostly listen to music released now. That’s always been my policy, including in 1971. When 1972 rolled up, I was mostly listening to music from 1972, music from ‘80 in ‘80, ‘91 in ‘91, 2018 in 2018, etc., to name just a few other favorites. (Plus The Beatles, okay? LOL I still listen to The Beatles every day. No apologies.) Honestly? It took me until 2011, in my fifties, when a whole bunch of 40th anniversary editions of 1971 albums got released all at once that made me think, “Wait a minute, this was maybe THE pivotal year in classic rock history!” 

So yeah, the historian in me dug into 1971, but even though I happened to be alive and enthralled by music in that year, what I’m doing here has nothing to do with nostalgia, or any idea that that was the *best* year in music, even if for the narrow slice of music that is classic rock, yeah, it absolutely is. For soul/R&B too, and for the explosion of women artists outside the even narrower confines of pop as well. This is not subject to debate. No year like it, before or since. It's just that classic rock is a such a narrow slice, and I like my slices wide. LOL Which is also why my blog has less and less 1971 content as I go along. 

While my general policy is that my favorite year for music is THIS year, this particular year hasn’t left me as much energy as usual for listening to music. Some of it is These Trying Times™, some of it is my bipolarity and schizophrenia getting the better of me in waves, as is the way with these, uhm, things. (Keep taking those meds, kids!) I listen to music and post about the people making it as a creative act, not a passive or reflexive one, and I just haven’t felt as creative as usual.

(This is also has everything to do with why so many Asks have been piling up unanswered. I apologize if you’re one of the many kind and indulgent souls who’s gotten in touch, but I swear I’m gonna get to ‘em all!)

To get an idea of what I’m ACTUALLY passionate about right now, my “to be edited later” running list of 2020 favorites randomly added to a playlist as I encounter them, to be properly curated later, is at Spotify, cleverly entitled “2020″ -- 94% women, which is about right. LOL 

But since I do in fact listen to old stuff (by which I mean 2019 LOL), I made a list of mostly 2020 bangers from women rockers with some tasty treats from 2019 that I haven’t been able to let go of just yet, inspired by a post I saw at tumblr saying that punk music by women is just plain better (also beyond debate), called “Women Bangers: A Tumblr New Classics Jam”. I’ll be posting an essay with a YouTube playlist soon, because god forbid that I only talk briefly about anything LOL and most of these women need to be heard AND seen.

Like Buffy Sainte-Marie, whom you'll both see and hear more often on my blog soon. Thanks for the reminder! Always a pleasure to hear from you and be challenged by you. :-)

Peace, Tim 

[sylvie-writes]

Clumsy

50. “You’re the clumsiest person I know…how did you survive past childhood?”

My first Sebastian Stan fic! (what a better way to start my break than ending with two fics in one day?)

hehehe, I took this from my prompt list bc I needed inspo. I had another fic in mind but it was stoopid [Ransom Drysdale voice]. Soooo here we are…

I’m gonna say it once more, I feel this isn’t my best writing (that’s why it is a hc)

Please pardon any mistakes!

I promise I will come back with a fresh mindset and better writing! 

Translation: băiat=boy

Enjoy loves!

It all started at 9 am this morning.

Sebastian had left for a photoshoot and you were still trying to figure out how to spend your day. 

As you were just about to make breakfast, Sebastian’s mom called and invited you to brunch. 

She was just the sweetest lady, a second mother to you basically.

All the time she insisted that you called her mom, which after a while, you finally did. 

Clearly, she had taken a liking to you all those years ago, a feeling you definitely reciprocated. 

So while at his photoshoot, Sebastian had gotten three missed calls from his mom and a bunch of texts. 

Come to find out, you were in the hospital and he immediately dashed out of the photoshoot. 

Now here we are, a nervous Sebastian pacing the halls, trying to find your room.

Eventually, he calmed down, came to his senses and found the room, your bright smile greeting him.

He hadn’t known what had happened and he expected the worse while on his way over. 

Sebastian took a seat beside your hospital bed, taking in your form. Right arm in a cast, and your left knee slightly elevated and in a cast.

“How in the hell did you do this, babe?”

A quiet giggle fell from your lips, the man beside you, looking at you with a confused expression. 

“Well, you see...I fell down the steps. Landed on my knee, fractured my kneecap, also landed on my right arm and broke it.” 

Shaking his head in disbelief, Sebastian let out a sigh at your constant stumbles, it’s like every week you were falling or slipping.

Last weekend you went to get a drink from the fridge and somehow managed to slip on your dress. 

To top it all off, later that night when you got out of the shower, you managed to hit your head on the shower door. Your boyfriend came rushing to your side, but you were just smiling like nothing had happened.

In all honesty, either you had a high pain tolerance or you were just desensitized. Maybe both. 

“Now, how did you manage to trip on the stairs, (y/n)?” Like a parent to a child, Sebastian looked at you with raised eyebrows and pursed lips awaiting your answer. 

“Uh well, it’s really quite a funny story you know-”

His unamused stare prompted you to quickly get back on track with the story. 

“Your mom had offered to take me out for brunch, so as I was walking down the stairs to greet her, someone rang the doorbell and it scared the cheese out of me. I slightly jumped and missed the stair below apparently…” 

Looking at Sebastian, a bashful look on your face, he just burst into laughter, you joining along, relieved he didn’t scold you. 

“You’re the clumsiest person I know…how did you survive past childhood?”

Shrugging your shoulders, you just continued to happily talk with him.

“In other words, the person who rang the doorbell delivered your nasty protein shakes. I hope it was worth it.” 

“Ah, I was wondering when they’d come in! And they aren’t nasty, you just have to try them again.”

“Says the man who literally grimaces as he drinks one.” 

Sebastian’s phone went off, a text from his mom.

“Mom brought us some food, she also wants to see you. I’ll be right back!” 

Getting up from his seat, Sebastian leaned over the hospital bed and kissed you until the smile growing on your face broke your sealed lips. 

Soon Ms. Stan came up with Sebastian, some takeout from the nearby burger joint.

The three of you talked, enjoying your burgers and the playful banter between Ms. Stan and Sebastian, every time he teased you.

“She’s so klutzy, maybe I should wrap her in bubble wrap.”

Jokingly, you ‘angrily’ threw a french fry at Sebastian, which he actually caught with his mouth.

“Oh hush, băiat! You are just as clumsy. Should I mention the time you were playing baseball and--

“Okay okay! I surrender. Wow, my own mother.” 

In mock offense, Sebastian brought his hand to his chest, mouth open in surprise. 

Laughing, you leaned over the bed rails and kissed his cheek.

“You are such a big baby.” 

Later that day, the doctors gave you the green light to head home.

Sebastian slowly helped you in the car, taking care of you as if you were a piece of the finest china.

“Make sure you don’t hit your head. And I’m being serious.”

You just stuck your tongue out at him as he returned the gesture, closing the passenger door. 

The traffic was terrible, and you both sat in a sea of cars for about half an hour.

To pass time you did some car karaoke. 

I got my hands up,

They're playin' my song

You know I'm gonna be okay

Yeah, it's a party in the USA

Yeah it's a party in the USA

While singing, Sebastian had locked his hand in yours and used it as a microphone.

Somebody once told me the world is gonna roll me

I ain't the sharpest tool in the shed

She was looking kind of dumb with her finger and her thumb

In the shape of an "L" on her forehead

“Oh no babe! Looks like we can’t sing this one!”

Sebastian gestured to your leg and you looked up at the song title, turning your head, you squinted at him, a retort on the edge of your lips.

“You are mean, you know that?

Oh, I wanna dance with somebody

I wanna feel the heat with somebody

Yeah, I wanna dance with somebody

With somebody who loves me

Sure, your song playlist may have been a little bit of a hodgepodge, but they were fun to sing and definitely killed a lot of time. 

You were sure the people in the cars beside you might’ve been concerned for yours and Sebastian’s sanity. 

Do you remember the 21st night of September?

Love was changing the minds of pretenders

While chasing the clouds away...

Then, all of a sudden, an all too familiar song came on and you knew, you just knew, Sebastian was about to have a ball with this one. 

“This should be your theme song, babe.”

You got me trippin', stumblin', flippin', fumblin'

 Clumsy 'cause I'm fallin' in love (in love)

You got me slippin', tumblin', sinkin', fumblin'...

“Oh shut up smartass.”

[brasskier]

Oh yeah totally forgot I was gonna do this. So the other day I had a good, long cart attendant shift. (As in, I plod around the parking lot bringing carts in on a fancy machine called the cart master for 5 hours.) I took the opportunity to finally listen to TAD, and I said I was gonna leave my thoughts on here. So here we are.

So. First things first, they're not the band to listen to doing carts. My usual carts playlist (aptly titled Cart Bitch Blues) is very upbeat indie folk, Green Day, a bunch of DCI recordings, some selections from the RHPS soundtrack, and also Fishmonger's Daughter. It's all very uptempo, stomp and holler kinda stuff, anything with the right bpm and thumping drums I can keep a good tempo to. There were a few songs I was like, yeah, this meets the requirements, but a lot of it just wasn't the right fit. So, it's not going to be my new go-to for carts lmao. This isn't their fault, it's my mistake.

Second thing. Joey and Madeline just have nice voices. You all knew that already. They bounce off each other very well. At times I almost felt like I was listening to a musical soundtrack. There's also a distinct folk tune-y vibe there. I feel like I'm listening to something a lot older than it really is. Sometimes I hear duets and it's literally just two people singing adjacently, like they could've recorded it in separate booths on opposite sides of the planet never having heard the other's part. But they actually sing together, which is good. The song would be incomplete without either part, and it couldn't have been produced any way other than collaboratively.

Thirdly. So I have auditory processing disorder, which is a form of hearing impairment originating in the brain, and one of the little problems it presents is being able to parse out lyrics. (Especially with anything other than my native accent. Basically I can only understand Bruce Springsteen and Bon Jovi lol.) This is why I listen to so much band and orchestral music, and a lot of drum corps recordings. No words, no problem. But you kinda need to hear TAD's lyrics, so I had to sit down and listen to it again with Genius open. Fuck, they're very good lyricists. I could name like a dozen lyrics I'd gladly get tattooed on my body right now. If you're not paying attention to the words you're missing out. Also they made me feel things. How dare they.

So in conclusion, I think they're pretty damn good, especially if that's the vibe your into, and especially if you want to feel emotions. Fantastic lyricism and a thoughtful utilization of their strengths. Are they going into my daily rotation? Probably not, and definitely probably won't be found in my carts playlist. (It's a very carefully curated playlist, I swear!) Their discography is going to be sorted into my playlists for certain moods, and I will probably eventually cry in the shower to them. (That's my personal equivalent to a grammy. I think so far only Lord Huron and Lewis Capaldi have ascended to that rank so far.) My final comment, and this is just me being a stuckup brass player here, but it needs more horns. Brass. Some punch. Strings are pretty, but god a good french horn and trombone part would absolutely slap.

Also, if you like TAD and/or Jaskier's songs from the Witcher or just bardcore in general, check out Patty Gurdy. She plays the hurdy gurdy, she has an enchanting voice, and she makes 10/10 music.

Anyway, as promised, there's my two cents no one asked for. I'll be sure to let you know when I finally cry in the shower to them.

[dalishious]

not da but I'm getting into Canadian music, I think you've mentioned before you like the tragically hip, what do you think of sloan? any other bands and artists to consider?

There’s a reason The Tragically Hip is so beloved in this country. Their songs aren’t just songs, they’re poetry. If you want to check them out, I recommend starting with the album Yer Favourites, which is a collection of their top songs voted by fans. And also I’d like to give a special shoutout to what I consider to be an extremely underrated album: We Are The Same. Most people will tell you Fully Completely is their best one, but there isn’t a single song in We Are The Same that I don’t love. (Especially Country Days, The Depression Suite, Coffee Girl, and of course, Now The Struggle Has a Name...)

Sloan has some good ones, and I’d be a poor Nova Scotian not to say that lol. If you like any of The Hip’s songs that have a more pop-ish vibe, you’ll probably like them.

Anyway, some more recommendations, only English unless you’re open to some French as well, let me know:

MATTHEW GOOD. MATTHEW GOOD. MATTHEW GOOD. (Before going solo, Matthew Good Band.) One of my all time favourite artists. I recently shared my playlist of my favourites on my main blog if you’re interested. Also just like The Hip, his lyrics are more often than not very poetic, and I love that. Especially given a number of them come from personal places and I’ll just say if you have any mental disorders yourself there’s a good chance you’ll be able to really feel when he sings about his own. Anyway, my two favourite albums in particular are Hospital Music and Avalanche, with Moving Walls and Underdogs (Matthew Good Band) close behind.

Our Lady Peace is fantastic. I recommend starting with the albums Gravity and Clumsy.

The Stanfields are a fun mix of what they call Folk’n’Roll. Check out their albums Vanguard of the Young & Reckless and Death & Taxes for sure. (Oh fuck, also check out the video for Afraid of the World because the end of it gets me every time... white woman walks around scoffing at all the pumpkin heads, then goes home and puts on her pumpkin head.)

If you’re interested in another really great mix of Atlantic Folk and alternative rock, I suggest Joel Plaskett / Joel Plaskett Emergency. Start with either the Joel Plaskett Emergency album Ashtray Rock, or the solo Joel Plaskett album Three. Also the album Solidarity he did with his father, Bill Plaskett, is beautiful. The Next Blue Sky is one of my favourite songs ever.

Matt Mays is one more Atlantic Folksy rock guy. Once Upon a Hell of a Time and Twice Upon a Hell of a Time (acoustic versions of Once) are a perfect starting point in my opinion, though most fans of his would tell you to start with the album Coyote, which is also great!

Arcade Fire is... I’m not really sure how to describe Arcade Fire. I like some of their stuff, but they are something of an acquired taste, I think. Try the album The Suburbs.

If I tell you I adored Avril Lavigne and Billy Talent growing up, would you judge me? Because I did, and I still do. If you’re willing to keep an open mind, try Avril Lavigne’s albums Under My Skin and Let Go, and if you’re in a real angsty mood, try Billy Talent’s albums Dead Silence and Hits. (I would especially recommend trying Billy Talent if you like bands like say, Green Day and MCR.)

Okay, some more classics... Rush, The Guess Who, Bachman-Turner Overdrive (BTO), and April Wine are all great. They all have greatest hits / best of albums, so just start there.

Oh shit, I almost forgot Bryan Adams, AKA the Canadian Bruce Springsteen. Though you’ll have trouble finding one of my favourite songs by him, so here it is.

I also feel like I needn’t even bother mentioning Neil Young since I’m assuming you him before, but... yeah. Neil Young, obviously.

EDIT: AAHHH forgot Great Big Sea! Check out their album Play.

EDIT: Yes I love Nickelback too. Sue me.

EDIT: I forgot, Alanis Morissete is Canadian. Listen to her Jagged Little Pill album if you’ve never done so before.

EDIT: I had no idea Three Days Grace was Canadian??? One-X and Human are my favourite albums by them, but Life Starts Now is also pretty up there. (Similar vibes to Bily Talent, but I’d say even more angsty lol)

I also wanna give a particular shoutout to at least some albums from my fave Canadian Indigenous artists:

Shawnee deserves so many more listeners please check her out. Her only full album as of now is Let It Burn, but she’s also got a bunch of released singles. 

Buffy Sainte-Marie’s Medicine Songs and The Best Of

Jeremy Dutcher’s Wolastoqiyik Lintuwakonawa... I know I said I’d limit reccomendations to English but I can’t help it.

Susan Aglukark’s This Child

Adrian Sutherland is a newbie, but I am begging everyone reading this to check out his song Politician Man. Needless to say, I look forward to hearing more from him.

[snowdice]

Finding the Time to Study Fic 2 [Day 33]

Here is my starting post for today’s study break stories session. See this post for more details and feel free to send me asks to keep me going! It’s been a lot of fun so far! I will reblog this post with the story as I write them today. I’ll be constantly looking for ideas of times and places for Janus to have missions, so feel free to send in any you can think of at any point!

If you are a new follower or just don’t want all of these posts clogging your dash, please feel free to block the tag “study break stories” as all posts and voting about it will go there. You can still see the finished product of the story even if you are blocking that tag as I will not tag the edited chapters with “study break stories” but with the tag “folds in paper.” See edited chapters below. None edited chapters are under the cut.

My Masterpost Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11

I also have a playlist on youtube (because Spotify didn’t have one of the songs I wanted). It’s short, and not really for serious listening, but I had fun with it.

Alright, here we go again!

Chapter 12

There was something off about his readings. Clearly the time distortion was starting to pull at this place with the way the weather was flickering between storming and sunny, but he still couldn’t quite pinpoint the exact location of the source of it. He could, however, get that it must be somewhere on this side of the river more into the downtown area, so that’s the way he was walking, Pat close on his heels.

“What’s your name, by the way?” he asked.

Janus shot him a glare. “Elvis Presley,” he said.

Pat frowned, clearly knowing who that was. “There’s no reason to be mean.”

 “You did it to me first.”

“…Introduced myself as a famous musician?” he asked. Janus didn’t respond, and after a moment, Pat laughed lightly. “You really don’t understand time travel, do you?”

“Oh, yeah,” Janus said. “Name the three types of time distortions.”

“Just because I don’t know the names of things doesn’t mean I don’t understand them.” He stuck out his tongue. Janus was dealing with an actual toddler. “Unlike you who has a bunch of fancy words, but just caused a time loop.”

Janus scoffed. “I did not just cause a time loop.”

“Maybe not a big one,” Pat agreed, “but you did.”

 Janus raised an eyebrow. “I’ve never introduced myself to you with a musician’s name, but now you’ve told me that I will. So, at some point in the future I will have to, thereby making you think to say that now. Time loop.”

“That’s not… that doesn’t count.”

“Does too,” Pat claimed. “Like I have said once before and you may or may not have heard me say before, anything you do to me to get back at me for something I haven’t done yet, just causes whatever that is to happen in the first place.”

“But you’re still going to do it.”

 “Then take it up with future me. I haven’t done anything to you.” Then he paused and sighed. “…Which I guess means you’ve done nothing to me.” He seemed to mull this concept over for a long moment. “Well you were a bit crabby about me not knowing what a time distortion was, but I can forgive you for that.”

“And I’m supposed to forgive you?”

“Like I said,” Pat said. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

“You also haven’t done anything to endear yourself to me either,” Janus grumbled.

“Hmm,” Pat said. “Fine.” He pulled something out of his pocket. “You’re obviously not having much luck finding whatever you’re looking for. Tell me what it is and I’ll help.”

Janus squinted at what was in his hand. “Is that… an iPhone 5?”

“No!” he said. “It’s super-secret time travel tech disguised as an iPhone 5!”

“We’re in 2027,” Janus said. “Not a great disguise. Those things have been obsolete for a decade.”

“Well I’ll keep in mind to have my tech disguised as phones from the right year next time,” Pat said, sticking out his tongue. “Now what are we looking for?”

“If my timepiece can’t find it, I’m certain yours can’t.”

 Pat rolled his eyes and tapped on the device’s screen a couple of times. “I’m going to guess it’s that,” he said proudly.

Janus leaned over to look at the screen. “Are you using google maps?” he sputtered.

“It integrates time relevant data like traffic conditions and local weather warnings with time travel technology,” Pat explained. “Something seems to be going on in a museum a couple of blocks that way.”

“I…” Janus said. That was actually a really good idea, usually unnecessary with scouts observing that data beforehand, and Janus wasn’t sure how good the accuracy would be considering whatever was taking it into account was automated, but still a good idea. “Well, I guess since we have no other leads, we can check it out.”

 Pat looked far too proud for having only used a piece of tech that hadn’t even been confirmed as accurate. “Then, let’s go,” he said right as a chilly wind started to pick up and a couple of snowflakes began to fall around them. “Before that gets worse…”

Janus let Pat lead with his iPhone. Janus’s timepiece still wasn’t picking up a clear signal for some reason, but it seemed to point in the same general direction as Pat’s. Strangely though, as they got closer to their destination, the signal started to get fuzzier. Pat’s tech seemed unaffected leading them closer to the museum.

 When they got to the Musée Fabre museum, Janus stopped. “What?” Pat asked. He was shivering slightly in the cold and holding his arms around himself.

“My timepiece stopped working completely,” he said.

“I’m assuming that’s weird?” Pat said.

“It is,” Janus confirmed, turning to squint at him suspiciously. “How do I know you’re not the one doing it?”

“If I was doing it, wouldn’t I have just knocked it out from the get go?” Pat questioned.

Janus pursed his lips. “I don’t know,” he said. “Would you have? Maybe it’s a trick.”

Pat’s eyes narrowed a bit on him. “Think what you want, but I’m freezing. Come in with me if you want.”

 He dithered from a few moments before following Pat inside. Pat had already struck up a conversation with the woman charging admission into art museum. She was looking at him, her brow knit as he spoke. Janus nudged him away from her getting a confused glance from him in return. He shot a smile at the woman.

“Two adult passes for the museum and the Hotel Sabatier d’Espevran, please,” he said, placing down 14 euro.

“Ah,” she said, still looking at Pat oddly. “Yes sir.” She gave them the passes and Janus quickly shuffled Pat away.

“What is wrong with your French?” he hissed once they were out of earshot.

 “What?” he asked, bewildered.

“You sound like you’re reading Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. No one talks like that anymore.”

“I’m a little rusty,” Pat defended himself.

“Two centuries?” Janus asked. Pat stuck his tongue out like a child once again. “Is that your only way to respond to legitimate criticism?”

“What does it even matter anyway? No one ever expects time travel, at least not for something so silly.”

“It’s not silly,” Janus said. “It’s a legitimate issue. The wrong person who’s watched too much science fiction notices and you’re putting the timeline at risk. Not to mention if there are other time travelers around that aren’t as nice as me.”

 “Are there a lot of time travelers around?” Pat asked, sounding intrigued.

“There are plenty, both legal and not.”

“Huh,” he said, “but what are the chances we’ll run into another one?”

“Considering the time distortion? There could be many. Opportunists wanting to capitalize off the chaos, people trying to stop it, like me, and not to mention the person who caused it.”

“Wait, someone made it happen?” Pat asked.

“These things don’t just happen naturally.”

“Huh. So, something like this has to be caused by a person?”

“Yes,” Janus said. “…Why?”

Pat smiled. “No reason. I think we should head upstairs. Whatever I’m picking up says it’s around here, but I don’t see anything. Maybe it’s a floor or two above us.”

“Which is why it’s ridiculous to use Google Maps.”

 “Would you rather use yours?” he asked sweetly.

“I’m still not convinced it’s not your doing,” Janus growled. “Why does your tech still work when mine doesn’t?”

“Probably the same reason the ring did,” he muttered.

“What?”

“What?”

“You may be the most aggravating being in the universe.”

Pat glanced at him with a bit of a smirk. “I can’t tell you,” he said. “It would be a much bigger risk to the timeline than me speaking in French from the 1830s. But, I’m pretty sure the reason mine still works is just a software difference.”

“What the hell do you mean a software difference?”

 Pat opened his mouth, doubtlessly to supply him with yet another frustratingly cheeky and unhelpful answer. Yet, Pat did not have a chance to do so as, just as Janus stepped onto the second floor of the museum, the ground started to violently shake. Janus tried to turn to catch Pat as the other man’s foot slipped on the last step, but he couldn’t do so in time. Pat fell onto his hands and knees, sliding back a few steps and smacking his face into the stairs hard once and then a couple of times more after that as he slid.

 Chapter 13

The room stopped shaking after a moment. “Ow,” Pat said. He seemed a bit stunned but was still moving at least. He carefully maneuvered himself into a seating position. “Ouch. Owie.” He reached up to poke his own nose. “Ow!” Janus slapped his hand away when he got there. A bit of blood was already trickling from his nose and there was a small cut over his eye, but it wasn’t bleeding too much.

Janus pushed him so he was leaning slightly forward and produced a pack of time appropriate tissues from his pocket. He pulled one out of the package and offered it to him.

 He took it and pressed it up against his nose to try to stop the bleeding. He seemed mostly alright though Janus imagined he’d have plenty of bruises down the line. The power in the museum flickered and Janus looked up. Now that he was listening, he could hear people panicking in and out of the museum.

“We should probably get off of the stairs,” he suggested.

“Yeah,” Pat agreed. Janus helped him to his feet, and they climbed back up the steps. Janus looked around and found an employees only sign a few feet away. Usually he’d not risk that as it could get him into trouble he didn’t want to be in, but considering the earthquake that had just happened, he could probably play it off as panic.

 He ushered Pat into a small room and found a chair and table. He had Pat sit in the chair and pulled out another one of the tissues to dab at the blood coming from the cut over his eyes. “Here,” he said. “Hold that there. I’m going to go see if there are any bandages about.”

Pat took the tissue with the hand not already holding one to his nose. “Thanks,” he said.

Janus nodded and got to his feet. The lights flickered once again but didn’t stay off for now. He didn’t know how long that would last.

 He couldn’t see anything that might hold bandages in this room, but there was a second door. “I’ll be right back,” he told Pat, exiting through it.

The lights flickered once more as the door closed behind him and he cursed. When they came back up Janus’s eyes immediately fell on a man. They both froze.

“Remus!” Janus hissed the second their eyes met. “What are you doing here?”

Remus blinked at him for a moment. “Hi. Janus,” he said. “I… come to France for… tea sometimes?”

“There isn’t any tea back here.”

“So, there isn’t…” he said. There was a moment of silence. “Uh, so I actually cannot talk to you right now.”

 “What do you mean?” Janus asked. Remus grimaced in a way Janus had never seen from him before. It immediately set off alarm bells in Janus’s head. “Oh my god,” Janus said. “Oh my god. You’re not from the same time as me.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Remus mumbled.

“Holy shit, you’re looping?!”

“It’s… not looping if I wasn’t here the first time.”

“Remus, we spend more than 12 hours a day together most of the time. The only thing worse than this is if I looped back to this time myself.”

“…Yeah. Anyway, I need to leave now.”

“Please do.”

 He turned to go, but then stopped. “Oh, and,” he reached into his pocket and tossed something at Janus. Janus caught it.

It was Band-Aids.

“Oh, shit,” Janus spat at the clear use of foreknowledge. “I hate this. I hate you. I’m going to kill you the next time you see me.”

“Sure, Jan.”

“Go.”

He did, slipping into the next room while Janus took a deep breath and then turned back to the door behind him. He schooled his face before Pat looked up. “I found some Band-Aids.”

Pat nodded and Janus came over to squat next to him.

 Janus opened the box and Pat looked down. His eyes lit up with sudden joy so intense that Janus felt like he’d just gotten a punch to the gut. “Kitty Band-Aids!” he exclaimed. Janus bothered to actually look at the design on the container, only to note the cartoon cats on the front. Pat was almost vibrating off his seat. “Look they’re all so cute!” He grabbed the container from him to inspect the different designs printed on the back with glee even as a bit of blood was still trickling from his nose.

Janus took the box back gently and guided the wad of bloody Kleenexes back to his nose.

 “Which would you like?” Janus asked.

“Oh, they are all so cute,” Pat cooed. “Um, how about that one!” he pointed. “Or that one! Or that one!”

“Pat you only have one cut.”

“But they’re all so cute!” Pat said, tongue tucking into his cheek. He contemplated the box again. “Let’s do the black one,” he finally settled on.

Janus selected one of the Band-Aids with a black cat wrapped around a pink ball of yarn and staring back at them with wide green eyes. The think looked like it had partaken in one two many doses of catnip, but Janus didn’t mention that.

 Instead, he just carefully unstuck the backing from the Band-Aid and motioned for Pat to remove the tissue from his forehead. He smiled at Janus as he drew back.

Janus cleared his throat. “How’s the nose.”

“It’s slowing down,” Pat replied. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Janus replied. They met eyes for a second before Pat looked away back at the box of Band-Aids.

“Oh,” Pat said. “There’s a grey one. I didn’t notice.” He pointed to it. “I should have used that one.”

“Do you like grey cats?” Janus asked.

“I like all kitties,” he said, “but one of my roommates loves grey cats. He had one when he was a kid and thinks of them as good omens. Seeing one always brightens up his day.”

“A friend of mine has a grey cat,” Janus said. “She’s much more tolerable than him.”

Pat laughed a bit. “Don’t be mean,” he said.

“Oh, he deserves it, don’t worry.” Janus considered him for a moment. “Here,” he said, pulling out one of the Band-Aids with the grey cat on it. It did, actually, look a lot like Diesel Fuel.

“But I don’t…”

Janus just shrugged and stuck it on his cheek where there was no wound. Pat giggled and touched it with a finger. Janus stood back up.

“Can I have another tissue?” Pat asked.

“Sure.” Janus handed a tissue over to him and he crumpled up the bloody ones in his hand.

“I think I’m good to keep going,” Pat said, putting the new tissue under his nose. “The nose will stop soon.”

 Pat got out his iPhone and directed him back out of the room. They checked the second floor and didn’t find anything and so went to the third floor. The second they arrived in the room that Pat’s phone was directing them too, Janus knew that it must be right. There was a strange, distorted whirling sound and the entire room was shaking slightly like they were standing next to a railroad track.

“I’m guessing this is it,” Pat said.

Janus nodded and looked over his shoulder at the screen. They both cautiously walked towards where the little dot was on the phone.

 “Is that it?” Pat asked, pointing at a small device on the center column in the room. Janus reached forward to flip the switch on it. The whirling stopped and the room settled. Janus’s time piece vibrated as it came back online. They waited for a few moments. “I assumed… time distortions would be more…”

“They are,” Janus said. “This one is artificial.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s a simulation,” Janus said. “It causes similar symptoms to a time distortion, but it’s not actually fracturing time at all.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” Pat asked.

“I don’t know,” Janus said. He took the piece of tech of the wall and carefully stored it in his pocket, “but someone’s trying to get our attention.”

 Chapter 14

Janus didn’t feel comfortable leaving France 2027 just yet, still weirded out by the strange turn of events. So, he and Pat ended up sticking around for a couple of hours. They looked through the art museum for a bit, but Janus was having trouble focusing on the pieces, and Pat eventually suggested they get some air. Janus agreed considering the museum would close for the night soon anyway.

They wandered around the downtown for a bit. The people seemed to jump back from the strange weather and earthquake that afternoon rather quickly, and there were plenty still about to blend into.

 Pat was snapping photos every so often like a tourist which Janus shook his head at but allowed because even with the outdated phone it almost made them blend in even more. It also might stop any questions about Pat’s weird way of speaking French. They could just say he was an overeager tourist who watched too many old movies.

“Ooo!” Pat said. “We should get crepes.”

“Why?”

“You can’t go to France and not eat crepes.”

“I assure you, you can,” Janus said dryly.

Pat shot a pout at him and the next thing he knew he was in a small crepe shop.

 For Janus, choosing something was easy. He just ordered the first thing he found on the menu which seemed to be a standard one with ham and eggs. Pat on the other hand seemed to be struggling greatly, and Janus had to gently push him to the side to let some other customers order first.

“What should I get!?” Pat asked. “They all look so good! I could do strawberry preserves or maple syrup or just sugar!”

“Or you could get one that is actually food,” Janus suggested mildly. “I don’t think you need any more sugar judging by how you are acting.”

Pat rolled his eyes. “You sound like Lo.”

 Janus made a note of the name ‘Lo’ even though it surely was a nickname.

“But, since you’re insisting, I’ll get something healthy. I’ll have the strawberry one. That’s a fruit!”

“It comes with a cream cheese filling,” Janus pointed out.

“And it’s fruit!”

Janus shook his head and stepped up to the counter. “One ham and cheese and one strawberry preserve, please,” he said to the cashier as he was not allowing Pat to order in French and accidently say something stupid. He forked over some euros.

“You don’t have to pay for me,” Pat protested when he saw that.

Janus glanced back at him. “I was afraid you’d try to pay in francs,” he said dryly.

 It looked like Pat was about to stick his tongue out at him, remembered that Janus had criticized him for that earlier, and then just scrunched up his face in displeasure as though that was any less childish.

They waited for their crepes to be finished and then went to eat them outside near a water fountain.

“I can pay you back for the crepe,” Pat said after they sat down. “I do actually have euros.”

Janus waved him off. “It wasn’t that expensive.”

Pat hummed. “Well, in that case. I insist on paying for a wish for you.” Janus raised an eyebrow. “In the fountain!” Pat clarified.

 Pat set aside his crepe to dig in his pocket for a couple of coins. “Here!” he said handing one over.

Janus glanced over at the fountain. “No.”

“Oh, come on,” Pat beseeched. “You have to want something. I’ll even throw it in for you, but you have to make a wish first!”

“No.”

“Please!”

Janus sighed. “Fine.” He popped the rest of his crepe in his mouth. “I wish for a crepe,” he said after swallowing.

“You just had a crepe, silly.”

“But I liked it, so I want another one.”

“We can go back and get you another crepe.”

“Ah, but I’m not hungry anymore.”

Pat crossed his arms. “You’re just being difficult on purpose.”

 “Not me,” Janus said putting hand over his heart. “I would never do something like that.”

 Pat glared at him, but then snatched the coin out of his hand. “Fine!” he said. “One crepe wish coming right up.” He hopped up with the two coins and darted over to the water fountain. Janus turned to watch him go but then happened to catch sight of something out of the corner of his eyes.

Pat’s phone.

He didn’t pause in his movement, completing the turn, but as he watched Pat close his eyes, presumably to focus on his own wish, Janus snuck a hand out and grabbed the phone without looking. He slipped it into his own pocket.

 Pat came back over after throwing both coins in the fountain and didn’t even seem to notice that his phone was missing, picking up his crepe to take another bite. Just to make sure, though Janus decided to distract him. “What do you think of your crepe?” Janus asked.

“I like it! It’s sweet, but not too sweet. There was a crepe place across the street from my apartment in college, but they always put a bit too much sugar in the dough, I think. I’d still eat them, but these are much better.”

Janus nodded and kept up the light conversation until Pat was finished.

21088

“Well,” he said then, getting to his feet. “It seems that nothing else is going to happen regarding the time distortion. I should be getting back.”

Pat hummed. “I should too. It’s movie night!”

“I probably should arrest you,” Janus noted.

“In the middle of all of these people?” Pat asked mildly.

“Touché,” Janus said.

Pat gasped and pointed at him. “Pun!” he said. Janus blinked at him. “Because we’re in France! That’s French!”

“…Goodbye Pat,” Janus said, turning to walk away from him.

“Goodbye… wait I still don’t know your name!”

Janus stopped to look back at him for a moment. “Like I said,” he replied. “Elvis.”

“Fine,” Pat said. “Au revoir, mon chéri.”

“You never stop, do you?” Janus asked.

Pat giggled. “Considering I don’t know what you mean, I imagine I’m just getting started.”

Janus actually left then, walking off towards the alley he’d first arrived in. In some ways, the mission had been a bust, but in others it had gone very well.

He felt for the weight of the phone in his pocket before pulling up the display screen on his timepiece to go back to the TPI.

It had gone very well indeed.

 Chapter 15

The first thing Janus had done when he’d returned to the TPI was hand over the timebomb to Khalid who sent it to forensics. Within the hour, forensics got back to them that it was the same timebomb as 2999 and that it had never exploded, but simply been diffused. Which meant, blessings on blessings, everyone got to go home that night.

 Not that Janus went home, no, he ended up falling asleep on his desk somewhere between 3 and 4am, but at least he wasn’t sharing his space with anyone. He’d been trying to hack the cell phone all night to see if it had anything he could use, but he honestly had no idea what he was doing. All it seemed he could do was play some annoying song over and over again about never giving someone up. At around 2am, he’d finally broken and sent off an email, though, he’d continued to try to mess with it after that.

 He got woken up by Lena coming into the office at 7am, and noticed he already had an email response asking when Janus wanted to come in.

“Now?” he sent back.

“…Do you sleep?” was the immediate response. “And yes.”

His wrist buzzed as an appointment in 5 seconds downloaded to his timepiece. He selected the coordinates and landed at Cultural Outreach. The receptionist blinked up at him and then back down at the screen on his desk. “Oh!” he said. “I didn’t see this appointment. I think Professor Eran is in his office.”

He didn’t stand to escort Janus this time, so Janus went ahead and went down the hall to Virgil’s office himself.

 He knocked on the door and while he was waiting for Virgil to open it, the infernal contraption once again started to play the same stupid song.

“I didn’t even touch you!” he spat, getting it out and tapping on the screen.

“Jonas Brothers dude again?” Virgil asked causally upon opening the door.

Janus shoved it at him. “Make it stop.”

Virgil took it and fiddled with it for a few moments before it stopped with the song. “Oh my gosh,” he said scrolling through something on the screen.

“What.”

“What maniac sets a custom alarm for every 30-60 minutes for a week that just plays ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’? Oh, and one ‘It’s Not Unusual’ on Saturday. He’s mixing memes at an alarming rate.”

 “Can you. Just. Make it not happen. Anymore?”

Virgil smirked at him. “Maybe.” He turned around to go back into his office.

“Virgil,” Janus growled following him in.

Virgil just laughed. “What do you want to know about it?” he asked. “Just a fair warning… the song means he… likely was aware someone would steal it.”

“Of course, he was,” Janus groaned.

“But I’m sure we can still get something out of it.” Virgil started tapping at the screen again. “Okay, let’s see. It’s an iPhone 5, and someone jailbroke it.”

“What does that mean?”

“Tampered with it so they could install non-company approved software,” Virgil explained.

“Well I figured that since he was using Google Maps to track time distortions,” Janus grumbled.

 “I think I have something,” Virgil said to himself while digging through his desk. “Ah ha!” He held up some sort of cord. “This will let me hook it up to my integrator.” He slotted the cord into the bottom of the iPhone and then crawled under his desk to fiddle around with some other things. “There we go,” Virgil said popping back up. “It might take a few minutes. Running the program any faster might overheat the phone.”

Janus nodded and sat back to wait. Virgil grabbed the phone and started to play around with it a bit even as it uploaded all of its information to his computer.

“Weird,” Virgil said after a moment.

“What?” Janus asked, sitting up straighter.

“There are exactly two contacts. Fewer than I’d anticipate for a regular phone from the 2010s. More than I would expect from one clearly not being used as a phone.

 Virgil glanced to the side, and it must have finished the download because he unhooked it from the computer. “I have a 21st century phone network adapter,” Virgil said. “It transfers call back to whatever date the phone says. Do you want to try calling one?”

“It’s worth a shot,” Janus replied.

Virgil dug back into his desk for a small device that he plugged into the same port he’d plugged the earlier cord. “Okay, which contact do you want to try first?” he asked. “One has ‘Ro’ with a crown, red heart, and a gold star emoji. The other has “Lo” with a book, blue heart, and Milky Way emoji.”

 “He mentioned a Lo,” Janus said. “So, try him first.”

Virgil nodded. “I’ll put it on speaker.” He pressed some buttons before setting the phone on the desk between them.

The phone rang three times before with a bit of a crackle, it was answered. “Salutations,” a voice said, voice sounding a bit scratchy as though he had only just gotten up.

Virgil motioned with his head for Janus to speak. “Are you ‘Lo’?” he asked.

The man hummed. “To some people.”

Janus… didn’t quite know what to say to that, or even what questions he should ask.

“I’m assuming you’re the man that stole my associate’s phone.”

 “Your associate?” Janus fished.

The man made an amused hum. “I believe you were calling him ‘Pat’ on your last adventure.” Janus could hear something being placed down on the other end of the phone. Before Janus could respond, he heard what sounded like an old keyboard being typed on. “Now,” Lo said. “I have to admit, I am surprised you were willing to oblige me so thoroughly by plugging the phone into your system. Let’s see…”

The screen on Virgil’s lit up bright blue all of a sudden. “…shit,” said Virgil.

“Well,” Lo said, “it seems you were clever enough not to plug it into the TPI system, which is disappointing, but…”

 There was more clicking on the other end. “Hmm, interesting music tastes for the 4000s,” he said.

“I’m an anthropologist,” Virgil spoke up.

“Ah, yes, I can see that,” Lo replied. “Virgil Eran, senior professor at Silver Mountain University, a vetted member of the Cultural Outreach program, and searched the phrase ‘How to eat sushi without making a cultural blunder and making everyone hate you and losing your job because what kind of shit anthropologist doesn’t know how to eat raw fish right’ which you then shortened to ‘How to eat sushi’ and proceeded to search 52 times in the last 48 hours.”

 Virgil went a bit scarlet around the ears. “Dude, did you really have to out me like that?” he hissed at the phone.

“My apologies,” Lo responded. “From my personal experience, don’t dip the rice parts in soy sauce, and don’t add too much wasabi. Overall, most people will be understanding of mistakes, and you will certainly not be fired or ostracized for handling food incorrectly. As long as you are not acting intentionally disrespectful, and I image you will not be considering your clear anxiety over whatever outing you are planning to attend, you will be fine.”

“Okay,” Virgil said. “Good point, but counterpoint, what if you’re wrong and everyone hates me forever?”

 “Is it the lunch meeting today at 11:30am?” Lo asked, “because I can see that a Professor Boris Laden has attended the event multiple years in a row. Considering he is a philosophy instructor, has no Japanese heritage that I can see, and I have found a photo of last year’s event wherein he has placed his chopsticks vertically in his rice, and he has yet to be fired or ostracized, I would postulate that your fears are unfounded.”

“Yeah but… okay, I really don’t have an argument for that one, except maybe I’m a piece of shit and everyone is looking for a reason to hate me.”

“Considering your many impressive accolades in your field, I would argue that ‘a piece of shit’ is not a good descriptor of you. Not to mention the fact that you are often a highly requested member for different committees in your department and outside of it.”

“Oh, but is that because people like me or because I’m an anxious mess and make sure events go off without a hitch?”

“From experience, disorder with people you enjoy the company of is far more tolerable than order with people you do not. Which explains my current living situation and the lack of finished dishes in my sink. Therefore, I would assume the former.”

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“A lot of assumptions,” Virgil commented, but he was smiling slightly.

“Assumptions based on data,” Lo argued back lightly.

“You really came in here, hacked into my computer and smacked my anxiety in the face, huh?”

“Glad to have helped.”

“Y-”

“Are the two of you finished?” Janus interrupted, finally getting sick of the two of them.

“Not nearly,” Lo said. “I have gained access to an entire network of a very large university and will be sorting through the data for a long time.”

“Ugh, right,” Virgil groaned, “and you got access through my integrator.”

“I doubt they’ll be able to trace it back to you if you don’t tell them.”

“Nice try,” Virgil said dryly, “but not likely. I’m telling them about you immediately so they can work to kick you out.”

Lo laughed. “Fair enough, but I’ve already gotten plenty of information at this point. Including the fact that you work with the TPI and scheduled an appointment with an Agent Janus Picani this morning set to start a few minutes before this phone call. So, hello Janus.”

“Bastard,” Janus shot back.

“And goodbye Professor Eran. It was a pleasure.” He hung up.

Virgil sighed and ran his hand through his hair. “This is going to be fun to explain to both of our bosses.”

  Arc II What We Do to Each Other

Chapter 16:

As it would turn out, Janus and Virgil did not get in trouble for hooking up the old phone to Virgil’s integrator, mostly because it wasn’t really a mistake on their part. The phone cleared all virus checks that the tech people both from the university and the TPI ran on it. The phone should have been clean and should not have caused an issue.

In fact, they were still trying to pin down the code on the general university server. They could tell that something was mucking about on the system but what or how was a mystery. This also meant that there was no telling what information had been compromised and considering how many things Silver Mountain had its hands in, that was… a bit worrying.

 Another worrying thing was there was suddenly more activity of late at the TPI. There were more time distortions popping up every day. Usually they would be few and far in between. There had been 3 total recorded the year before, but over 12 in the last week. Some of them were fake like the one Janus had investigated, but some of them were real. It painted a distressing picture and also was a drain on their resources. Khalid was actually looking to advertise positions to hire new recruits which was something she rarely did as she liked to keep appointments to the TPI in house.

 They’d even loosed the number of field agents needed for each mission and Janus and Remus had been splitting up just to get everything done. Today, he and Remus had thankfully only two missions scheduled for the day.

“Are we going together or separate today?” Janus asked Remus.

“Think they’ll burn me at the stake for being a witch if I go alone to either of them?” Remus asked.

“I don’t know. Probably. I think we’re getting a bit late into the 1700s for that in Cuba, but I have no idea about Mesopotamia.”

“Let’s just go together. I did not like almost drowning yesterday because I was the only stranger in town when the weather was going wonky.”

“Surely it isn’t because you opened your mouth. Ever.” Janus said dryly.

“How was I supposed to know he was the local clergyman’s son?”

 Janus rolled his eyes. “On second thought,” he said, pushing a button on his desk to choose Cuba as he next mission, and standing up. “I don’t want you coming with me.” Yet, he did not protest when Remus also signed up for the Cuba mission and he waited for him by the office door before going to talk to Rhi.

Rhi was a bit frazzled when which meant quite a bit as she was usually incredibly put together. Remus didn’t even seem inclined to tease her today.

“Okay,” she said once they’d closed the door behind them. She flipped through some documents on her desk. “Picani and Clockson. Camaguey Cuba 1755. Do you know Cuba?”

 “Uh,” Janus said. “Yeah?”

“Like you’re reading the things, right? I don’t have to babysit you, right? You got it? The Seven Year War was happening, but it won’t affect you much as it hasn’t really hit Cuba. It’s the middle of the Camaguey Carnival. Everyone will be everywhere and there will be chaos so as long as you don’t really fuck up you should be fine. Um…apparent races.” She looked up at them and studied them each for a moment as thought looking at them for the first time despite having known them for years. “It’ll work. Go to costuming.”

“Shouldn’t we…” Janus said, “sign things?”

 “…Yep,” she said, fiddling with her desktop and then sending documents over to their side to sign.

Janus and Remus both did before sending them back.

“Great. Good.” She stood and grabbed some things from behind her. “You can go.” She sat back down as they took their things and Janus noticed a message pop up on her desk. She looked up at Remus looking exhausted. “What?” she asked.

“Just open it,” Remus said.

Rhi tapped it and a photo opened.

“I got her a new mouse toy!” Remus said happily as Rhi looked at the picture of Diesel Fuel attacking a cloth mouse.

“That is… appreciated Agent Clockson,” Rhi said. “Now get out.”

 They did, leaving to get their costumes on and checked. Costuming was just as busy and frazzled as Rhi had been and they actually had to wait for decon because there’d been a mix up with the agents leaving before them. They landed in Cuba without issue. Janus could already hear the festival in full swing outside the small building they’d were in. Remy was standing there with a very not time appropriate mug of coffee.

“Sue me,” Remy said when Janus raised an eyebrow at it. “Please just… get in and out without causing trouble. Seriously. I don’t want to have to deal with that on top of everything else.”

 “We’ll do our best,” Janus assured.

Remy pulled his sunglasses down to look at him. He looked exhausted. “God please do more than your best.”

Janus nodded tightly. “We’ll be in and out,” he said, already glancing at his timepiece. It had been disguised as a golden bracelet which made it a bit harder to actually use, but wrist watches wouldn’t be invented for more than a century, so they’d have to make do. “The time distortion, if that’s what it is, should be in the middle of town. Let’s go.”

He and Remus exited the building onto the packed city street.

 Janus was immediately bombarded with all types of sights, sounds, and smells. There were many colorful articles of clothing and costumes as people went every which way along the street talking to other members of their community, playing instruments, and dancing. There was the sound of people speaking Spanish, still mostly almost pure Castilian Spanish with perhaps a bit of influence from Taino as the Haitian revolution had yet to push the Creole language over to Cuba. People must have been hard at work cooking different dishes for the carnival as many different spices wafted through the air. It was sticky hot considering it was the middle of June in the tropics and Janus was immediately sweating despite the temperature appropriate clothing he’d been outfitted with.

 He glanced around their immediate area, just scoping out the crowds. His eyes were immediately drawn to one person near them.

“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” he said out loud when he saw Pat. Remus looked in the direction Janus was.

Even if Janus didn’t recognize him the moment he laid eyes on him, he probably still would have ended up staring as he was the only person in the area who clearly did not know how to do the dance he was attempting.

Remus snorted and Janus shook his head in secondhand embarrassment. “Well, would you look whose boyfriend’s here,” he said to Janus. Make that firsthand embarrassment. “Has anyone told him the Mambo wasn’t invented until the 1900s and also that’s not how you do it?”

 Chapter 17

Pat stopped dancing the moment he saw Janus approaching him, but he still bobbed cheerfully ( and unrhythmically) to the music. “Hi Janus,” he said pleasantly.

“You just have to rub it in, huh?”

There was a flash of confusion across his face, but then he smiled. “Well, I know where in our relationship you are. How was France?”

“You’re a bastard.”

“You stole the phone,” he laughed.

“You stole the bomb,” Janus countered, “and you wanted me to steal the phone. You booby trapped it.”

“No,” Pat correct, putting a finger up. “We have security on my phone because in high school I once forgot it in the school locker room and long story short, the three of us ended up in a lake. So, then Lo made sure I always had some sort of tracker on it. When I started time traveling, he updated it and when I met you we updated it again in case there was ever an opportunity like that. Lo calls it using our weaknesses to our advantage.”

 “He’s a bastard too,” Janus growled.

Pat just laughed.

“Is someone talking about me?” Remus asked, stepping over to them. Janus rolled his eyes.

“Oh,” Pat said, blinking at Janus’s partner for a moment. “Remus.” He hesitated slightly. “How are you doing?”

“Me?” Remus asked. “Uh, I’m doing good. A little stressed out with work, but fine.”

“Good,” Pat said with just a little too much heartfulness to it.

“What?” Janus asked, eyes narrowed at Pat. “What is that?”

“What is what?” Pat asked. He met Janus’s eyes briefly and it made panic surge up Janus’s spine because the look Pat was sending him wasn’t one that said he was playing dumb. It was a warning.

 Oh, Janus did not like this. That look told Janus Pat had some foreknowledge that he absolutely could not tell Janus about without messing up the timeline spectacularly. This was why this mess the two of them were mixed up in was so bad, but it seemed Janus did not have much of a choice when it came to Pat.

Despite how bad of an idea he knew it was, he still wanted to push, because whatever Pat was hiding could be very, very bad and it had to do with Remus. There were so many reasons Pat could be acting like that around Remus, but the worst ones were definitely the ones on his mind. Death, injury, illness. They were all possible especially in their line of work and especially with how time was being screwed with right now. And Pat knew. He knew exactly what the answer was, and oh did Janus want to push.

Experience knowing what worse things could come out of having foreknowledge made Janus bite his tongue.

 “So, what are you two doing here,” Pat asked, and Janus unhappily let him change the subject.

“Oh, like you don’t know,” Janus replied.

“I don’t know,” Pat said innocently.

“There’s another time distortion,” Janus said, “and while you didn’t know what it was the last time I saw you, I’m pretty sure you do now.”

“Oh, I didn’t know there was a time distortion here. I can help you if you like,” he offered sweetly.

“Oh, yeah, sure. Then why are you here?”

“I wanted to see if I could find the Flying Dutchman,” Pat told him.

“And so you went to Camaguey?”

“Uh huh.”

“One of the farthest places from the ocean in Cuba?”

 “Is it?”

“I don’t trust you.”

Pat just shrugged. “Well, if you don’t want my help finding the time distortion, I’ll just be on my way then.”

“Wait,” he said when Pat went to turn away. Pat paused. Janus turned to Remus. “Remus, do you think he’s bullshitting me so I let him wander off and do whatever the hell he’s doing, or do you think he’s bullshitting me into letting him come with us.”

“Hmm,” Remus said, looking Pat up and down. Janus could immediately tell he wasn’t going to get any helpful answer. “Well, if we’re going with the how much do I get to see his, admittedly very sexy, ass criteria.” Janus pinched the bridge of his nose. “Letting him leave now means instant gratification and a nice full image when he turns away. However, letting him go with us means many more opportunities to get a glimpse, but they’d probably just be glimpses. So, yeah that’s a tough call.”

“You didn’t even bother to give me an actual hidden suggestion with that bullshit,” Janus groaned. He glanced at Pat only to see him hiding his very red face in his hands. Janus blinked. “Oh,” he said. “You got him, Remus.” Janus was surprised. He’d expected a bit more tenacity for someone with Pat’s personality. Of course, Janus was used to Remus, so that perhaps had some effect. Pat made a muffled distressed sound behind his hands and Janus raised an eyebrow. “You really got him.”

Pat flapped one hand around while still using the other to completely hide his face. “It’s just. His face. Saying that. Is weird.”

 Janus could not say that he didn’t feel a slight spark of joy at seeing Pat flustered. After all, Pat’s weapon of choice had often been flirting with Janus in the past. However, he still smacked Remus on the shoulder when it looked like he was about to continue with something likely far more inappropriate. “We are here for a reason,” he reminded. He turned to consider Pat and squinted at him. “You’re coming with us, I’ve decided. I don’t want to let you out of my sights. Don’t,” he said empathically turning to Remus as the man opened his mouth once more.

 Pat had mostly recovered, though his cheeks were just a bit pink still. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go with you. Where do we start?”

Janus glanced at his timepiece. “It’s not showing up on our trackers yet.”

“It messed with your tracker last time,” Pat pointed out.

“I know,” Janus said. “Which means it could be another fake one or whatever is causing it hasn’t started yet. If things start going wrong, but it still doesn’t show on our radar, it’s almost certainly a fake one, but some of the fake ones haven’t blocked our technology.”

“Here, I can check,” Pat said.

“Please don’t pull out an iPhone,” Janus begged.

 Pat stuck out his tongue at him, and then smiled. He reached for the bracelet on his wrist and twisted it back and forth a few times before pressing his palms together. He glanced around them quickly to make sure no one around them was watching and then peeled apart his palms like he was miming reading a book.

“What the fuck is that, and how do I get one?” Remus asked immediately. It was innocuous, whatever it was. If someone from this time caught a glimpse of the display, they’d likely assume it was a trick of the light, but staring right at it, Janus could tell it was a map of the surrounding areas with a softly glowing blue light marking their current location. Janus could see no screen or origin of a hologram. It looked like the image was drawn onto the man’s palms, but as he watched, the image shifted to zoom out.

 “There doesn’t seem to be anything major yet,” Pat said wiggling his fingers a bit. The display changed slightly to some sort of colorful overlay Janus did not understand. Pat hummed. “Did you two come from that building recently?” he asked nodding at it.

“Yes,” Janus replied. “How do you know?”

“There’s sometimes a slight temperature change when people time travel,” Pat explained. “I can read it on here.” He tilted his head. “There also seems to be a big enough temperature change in a church a few blocks away that could indicate time travel. Want to check it out?”

“We might as well,” Janus agreed.

“And if it’s nothing, we can get drunk on the communion wine!”

“He’s going to get immediately struck by lightning,” Janus said.

 Chapter 18

“If we see anyone,” Janus said as they entered the church. “You keep your mouth shut. Do you understand me? Remus, do you understand me?”

Remus immediately turned to Pat. “You know, I didn’t grow up Catholic,” he said to Pat who looked at him in confusion. “So the first time I ever entered a Catholic church, you can’t blame me for being a little confused about the whole cabinet thing with a wall between them. After all, everyone was singing about glory to god and what not. So I…”

Janus slapped him. “This is why you were almost burned at the stake yesterday.”

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“Excuse you,” Remus said, putting his hand over his heart. “I was almost drowned.”

“You were almost drowned?” Pat asked, his voice seeming legitimately distressed.

Remus shrugged a smile on his face that caused a Pavlovian migraine to start up behind Janus’s eyes. “It’s one of the hazards of the jobs, and really it would have all been worth it if I’d actually gotten to drown in that man’s…”

“We’re in a church!” Janus cut him off switching from Spanish to Swahili in the hopes that no random passersby would be able to understand him in this time and place. “Don’t talk about lewd sex things. Don’t talk about sex at all. It’s a Catholic church!”

  Remus continued to speak in Spanish with no regard for anything. “But not talking about lewd sex things takes away 3/4ths of my personality,” he pouted.

“More like 9/10th,” Janus grumbled, “and the other 1/10th is just normal stupid.”

“Hey, you shouldn’t be mean,” Pat scolded, in fucking English for some reason, “but Remus, honey, you probably shouldn’t be saying things like that right now.”

“No, no, he has a point,” Remus said switching to English.

“He’s my partner, I have the right to call him stupid,” Janus insisted.

“And I love you too!” Remus said in Greek because he was really, truly, stupid.

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Pat looked between the two, but then seemed to accept it, dropping the concerned expression for a slightly amused one. “If you say so.”

“Can I… help you?” A voice asked. All three of them whipped around to see a young boy looking at them and seeming very confused. Which was fair considering that to his ears, they’d just been speaking nonsense.

“We’re here to pray!” Remus claimed, then he turned to wink at Pat and said under his breath in Swahili, “to that ass.” Pat went immediately bright red again, which was doubtlessly Remus’s aim. Janus subtlety stepped on his foot while smiling at the boy.

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“Oh,” the boy said. “Okay.” Thankfully, he didn’t seem interested in questioning the random strangers in front of him further. “I’m going to go back to the celebration now.”

Janus smiled at him. “Have fun,” he said. He waited for the boy to leave through the front door before slapping Remus on the back of the head.

“Ow!” he whined sounding far too pained for how hard Janus had actually hit him.

Janus rolled his eyes. “Let’s just start investigating,” he said.

“Sure, sure, you never let me have any fun,” Remus said, pulling up his wrist and spinning the golden bracelets on his arm. “Hmm…” he said.